Sealy and IDEO first collaborated in 2008, to rethink the design of its Stearns & Foster line. For years, Sealy, the largest mattress manufacturer in the world, had taken the standard industry approach to selling mattresses and watched market share and sales flatten; it knew something had to change. Stearns & Foster evolved from a single product design into a keystone for transforming the organization.

IDEO helped Sealy use actionable consumer insights to develop a scalable design methodology and new brand principles, which it applied to product design, operational and manufacturing decision-making processes, and sales and marketing strategy. This “brand-to-product” framework was subsequently used for three separate and consecutive product launches—Stearns & Foster, Embody, and Posturepedic—resulting in an overhaul of 85 percent of Sealy’s mattress portfolio.

Tempur-Pedic was already working with IDEO on a new mattress design when it acquired Sealy in 2013. It was also interested in how design thinking and human-centered design could improve its business. Once solely focused on the technological elements of designing a mattress, together with IDEO, Tempur-Pedic redesigned the outer shells of its mattresses to reflect the quality on the inside. This design change led to the company to look at new ways to infuse design into their products.

“The initial project was to design the mattress,” said Thomas Overthun, associate partner and design director at IDEO. “But the second project was to create a whole design language from the mattress out to what it meant for any other product, from pillows to blankets and other accessories. It eventually became bigger than just the mattress.”

Working on the Tempur-Pedic/Sealy relationship has been gratifying, said IDEO partner and design director Michael Hendrix, because although home goods can be thought of as simply products, nothing could be further from the truth. IDEO and Tempur-Pedic/Sealy changed the course of the mattress company's business through the transformative power of designing where, and ultimately how, people sleep. And in the process, the organization itself changed as well, moving siloed departments to cross-functional teams, with the brand division central to their cooperation, which led to consistent and aligned decisions across the board.

Some of the projects include:

Stearns & Foster Luxury Mattress
Sealy teamed up with IDEO to develop a design language for Stearns & Foster mattresses that would reestablish what the brand stood for. Through redefining brand principles and rounds of prototypes that focused on evocative details, the new Stearns and Foster mattress was the highest rated in Sealy’s portfolio since it started keeping records, and initial retailer orders were three times what management projected.

Next-Generation Posturepedic
An icon in the mattress industry was brought into the 21st century by developing a new product that delivered on the long-running promise of the brand. Together, IDEO and Sealy designed a product that focused on holistic back health. In its earnings report, the company said US bedding sales for the quarter were up 10.6 percent, to $253.4 million, a figure driven by the new product line’s introduction. According to Sealy’s Q3 earnings report, the Posturepedic launch represented the largest and fastest rollout in the company’s history.

Embody by Sealy
The project began by defining the market opportunities for all-foam beds, and ended with the modern, streamlined Embody mattress as well as a simplified design language, free of industry jargon, to help retailers talk about the mattress to customers. “Sealy collaborated with IDEO to create an approachable and attractive mattress that delivers the simple, healthy rest consumers want with a selling story they can easily understand,” said Jodi Allen, Sealy’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Tempur-Pedic Sleep System
Best known for the revolutionary, NASA-proven Tempur material inside its mattresses, Tempur wanted to transform the exterior of its mattresses to match the caliber of innovation inside. Together with IDEO, Tempur created a new sleep system, including an easily removable and washable fabric mattress cover. “Tempur-Pedic was born of innovation, but we were never a design-driven company until we worked with IDEO,” said Patrice Varni, senior vice president of brand marketing, Tempur Sealy North America, LLC. “Seeing consumer need in a new way through IDEO’s eyes has transformed us. Our product design, our creative psyche, our brand are all fundamentally changed by this sharper focus. This collaboration has given us all a renewed sense of pride.”

The challenge of how we’ll feed the exploding world population in the future—in a sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way—is seeding an agricultural revolution in Europe.

In 2012, INFARM founders Erez, Guy Galonska, and Osnat Michaeli found that vertical farms could be a solution to urban self-sufficiency. These farms could allow people to grow vegetables and herbs in small spaces, with no soil and far less water.

An approach that’s captured the imagination of futurists for decades, vertical farming involves growing vegetables and herbs in stacked units or inclined surfaces, within which moisture, light, temperature, and nutrients are monitored, and controlled.

After creating their first vertical farming experiment in their apartment in Berlin, the founders brought together plant scientists and industrial designers to explore and develop vertical farming’s potential.

Since then, the startup has created custom growing systems for clients including Airbnb, Mercedes-Benz, and Weber. Most recently, INFARM installed a vertical farm growing herbs and vegetables at the Berlin branch of German supermarket chain Metro, the fourth-largest retail chain in the world, to sell to the public. It’s been profiled in Wired Germany, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian, and Zeit.

INFARM collaborated with IDEO to further explore their B2B offer, including concepts for the industrial design of the stackable, modular, climate-controlled units; the interaction design of an accompanying app to monitor and control the units, and its business model.

Urban farmers will sign up for “farming as a service,” comprising the units themselves, as well as a monthly subscription for seeds, cartridges filled with nutrients, and a pH regulator. Because they’re stackable, the modules can be scaled to suit anyone from a home grower to a restaurant chef or supermarket owner. And Erez claims a 1 square meter growing tray can yield four to six mature plants every day, 365 days a year, doubling that of state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouses.

As well as remotely regulating each unit’s climate, the app will educate growers about new vegetables and herbs, selling packs of complementary seeds, with suggested recipes for them, and cooking instructions. Aiming to promote biodiversity, the firm will sell rare-breed and heirloom seeds too.

The startup has funding from the EU’s European Pioneers fund, and is now looking to secure investment to accelerate software development and ramp up their hardware production capabilities. Quite literally, it's growing its business.

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational group that revolutionized children’s television with the launch of the landmark Sesame Street program in 1969. The show, which has since become a household name, is now watched in more than 150 countries worldwide. The Workshop also creates educational content for new media platforms, and partnered with IDEO to design a line of Sesame Street–themed apps for Apple’s iPhone. The Elmo Calls app, which functions as a utility app for parents and as an entertaining behavioral-development app for kids, is now one of the Top 100 paid iPhone apps in the iTunes store.

The collaboration began with a mutual desire to bring the show’s beloved characters to the iPhone platform—and to do so using a human-centered design approach. Child-development experts, educators, toy and interaction designers, and even the Sesame Street puppeteers weighed in on the design decisions. The team also worked closely with families throughout the project—from initial concepts to early prototyping to the final development—in order to stay focused on how children actually use the iPhone for play. The games were designed accordingly. For example, the team omitted menus from the Sesame Street apps to keep the experiences simple, playful, and fun for a young child. And each game features exclusive new Sesame Street videos, allowing players to enjoy “lean back” moments along with interactive ones.

The resulting iPhone applications let children engage with the favorite Sesame Street characters in a whole new way. Kids touch, shake, swipe, and tilt their way through original games featuring Elmo, Grover, Bert, Rosita, and the Count.

The titles, all of which are available from iTunes, include:

• Elmo Calls: Engages 2- to 5-year-olds in listening-skills practice and active participation during everyday situations.
• Elmo’s Monster Maker: Allows kids to create unique monster friends that dance and play with Elmo.
• Sesame Street Video Maker: Lets kids star in their own music videos, mashing recordings of themselves with popular Sesame music videos and adding their own stamps and special effects.
• Sesame Street Makes Music: Helps kids explore an array of instruments as they contribute to new renditions of classic preschool tunes with their Sesame friends.

How do you know when you’re successful in your work? You can check off a list of technical skills and expertise you bring to the table. You can use a career development rubric to make sure you’re hitting the right goals. But often, it’s your behaviors—the intangibles that are the most difficult to articulate—that make the most impact. Things like your ability to stay optimistic or your willingness to adapt when there’s no roadmap.

Because of the nature of our work at IDEO, these intangibles are a big part of what defines the experience of working at the company. So in 2012, a global team of designers from our U.S., Europe, and Asia offices came together to codify these values and behaviors as part of a larger effort to evolve IDEO’s career development platform. More often than not, when IDEOers hit road bumps in their career, it was not about what they were doing, but how they were doing it.

The team agreed that, in addition to identifying the technical requirements needed to progress through one’s career, it was just as crucial to give IDEOers the tools they need to navigate the complex culture. So they captured the values they believed were foundational to the culture and most strongly shared across the IDEO community, and put them to paper in The Little Book of IDEO. The title is meant to reflect its purpose for readers—a handbook that’s compact, useful, and free of any corporate jargon.

For IDEO-ers, this red cloth-bound guide provides a shared lexicon around both the hard and soft skills we need to succeed. It describes things like why IDEO is so loosely structured, where it comes from, and where it’s headed.

Most importantly, the book identifies the organization’s seven core values. These are by design specific, actionable, and integral to the kind of work we do and the environment in which we do it, going beyond common sense and general ethical practice. The intention: to foster meaningful conversations within the community about life at IDEO, and how to achieve success along the way. With each succinct expression comes a deeper explanation of why it matters, and how it shapes our experience at IDEO.

Over the years, the book has been roundly embraced by the IDEO community as an honest articulation of who we are, as opposed to what we aspire to be, and what we appreciate most about working together. When IDEOers first got their hands on it, a movement took shape to create videos that bring each of the core values to life. To depict the value of "Embracing Ambiguity," for example, New York-based designers built a makeshift cardboard rowboat, and while simulating a storm, navigated their way through uncharted territory with teamwork and optimism. San Francisco produced a Jacques Cousteau inspired look at the lifestyle and behaviors of designers in their natural collaborative habitat.

Through the process of making the videos, IDEOers came together to reflect on each of the values, talking through what resonated and what didn’t. It gave them a sense of ownership, and a platform through which to share their interpretations.

A Global Conversation

IDEO has a global presence—offices in two countries in Europe, two countries in Asia, and multiple locations across the U.S. As an organization that embraces a human-centered culture, it felt important to learn if the values resonated with the IDEO community in all of these locations, especially in a country like China, whose working culture is so different from the west. We saw the authenticity and resonance of the values as essential for attracting, motivating, and retaining local talent.

So how did The Little Book of IDEO land in Shanghai? Exploring this question would illuminate insights into how our own clients are often challenged to keep their company culture resonant within the global landscape.

A team of IDEOers in our Shanghai office took on the challenge of exploring the meaning behind each of the values. They were surprised with what they discovered—that despite the firm’s Western origins, locals felt largely connected to the values. It even helped to further solidify their identity as a community, even if it may have been in tension with local working culture, because it was rooted in a set of shared beliefs.

In some instances, the Shanghai team built on the existing values in order to refine the meaning for the local context. For example, the core value "Be Optimistic" rings true, but could sound naive when translated directly to Chinese, implying "rose-tinted glasses.” So in the Mandarin edition, an extra phrase was added to convey the measuredness we mean when we talk about optimism at IDEO. The lesson here: The treatment of something as fundamental and nuanced as our values requires authenticity and emotional connection, and therefore more of a transcreation process than straight translation.

Lasting Power

As an organization, we are designed to be flexible. This means we’re always changing—even when it comes to how we are structured—so that we can respond to the kinds of challenges that clients come to us for. In the midst of our constant evolution, The Little Book of IDEO is as resonant today as it was when it was published.

I must say: Designers have an advantage when it comes to communication. We have the benefit to use not only our words, but also visualizations, from sketches and 3DCAD to infographics and physical objects. Designers are capable of making words real, expressing an idea in form, color, material, and finish. We truly are tangible storytellers. But having the means to make ideas tangible doesn’t necessarily solve all communication issues—we all speak nuanced languages and carry biases toward the things we already love to hear, see, or experience.

You may have heard of the 5 Love Languages, a tool to help characterize the ways we give and receive love. What if a similar tool could be built for designers? What if, before sharing an idea, you could learn the “design love language” of your audience? You learn your romantic partner’s love language to better connect with them; you might learn your colleague’ design love language to better collaborate, or a client’s design love language so you can craft the perfect presentation.

Here are 4 “languages” to help you communicate the value of your design straight into the hearts of your audience:

1. Storyteller’s Circle

For many people, it’s the story behind your idea that will really make it sing. This goes far beyond how the idea solves a problem for people and the business; that should be a given. It’s about the thoughtful descriptions of how the idea came about, why it will make a positive impact in the world, how it was better than other ideas, and why you feel confident about that.

The team we worked with at PillPack did this masterfully. During the research phase of the process to redesign how patients engage with pharmacies, we heard personal, painful stories about dealing with the US healthcare system. Standing in long lines, keeping up with expiration dates, making sure you take this medicine with food and that one on an empty stomach—patients told us it's overwhelming. We could immediately tell there was a huge opportunity to design something to solve for these problems, and the stories we heard inspired the team to create a single vision, strategy, experience, and identity that consumers quickly understand.

To gauge whether your story will resonate, try rehearsing it as if you were speed dating. If people understand your concept in a single sentence or get excited in the first 30 seconds, you’re on to something.

2. Make it Zing

There are some ideas that make us express feelings that are beyond words—“oooohs” and “aaaahs.” For people who need that ah-ha moment to really make a new idea click, it’s your job to make them say, “Oh, wow.”

When sharing IDEO’s vision for the future of mobility, I’ve heard people remark, “So that’s what our city could look like.” The project explores the many ways that we imagine transportation—of people, places, ideas—evolving over the coming years. Though they’re purely conceptual, the ideas are brought to life through visual renderings and context clues that make them feel tangible—they transport the viewer to The Future. Try not to gasp when you realize that.

To get started, think about which of the senses you want to appeal to, then work to amplify them. Use visual cues or sound to your advantage—the “zing” happens when the idea flirts with us and tickles our senses, gut instinct, and imagination. Lean into the unpredictable, the whimsical. Make someone sigh or shout.

3. Straight to the Heart

What was the last performance you gave a standing ovation? When was the last time you cried at a movie? Which book moved you so much that you bought all your friends copies for the holidays?

This love language is about emotional resonance—tapping into the power of human emotion to impact your audience on a deep, personal level. I’ve found that it works particularly well for helping people build empathy for the human elements of large, complex systems and structures.

Our approach to telling the story of IDEO's work to design the voting system in Los Angeles County was to tug at the heartstrings, which helped make complicated and bureaucratic topic more accessible. The photos, videos, and audio stories were designed to highlight the humans who are casting ballots—the hardships, the triumphs, and everything in between.

Body language and word choice are key to nailing this one. Take cues from your audience—when you see someone lean in, nod, let themselves smile, you know you’ve landed on a moment that made things click. Practice your story with a friendly audience and observe those moments, then design your storytelling experience around them.

4. Lights, Camera, Action

For some, actions speak louder than words, and they can only fall in love with the idea after seeing or trying it. They want to use it over time, test it, live with it, break it, and have others do the same. For these people, ideas need to be on a movie set, including the actors, the scene, and the props.

For this audience, make sure to bring your idea to life as a prototype, and allow them to experience it out in the wild. That’s what we did when we helped Swarovski build a new chandelier. We didn’t just look at renderings—we built a whole living room in our office to test our prototype.

Prototypes don’t have to be perfect. In fact, they shouldn’t be. Showing up with a prototype made of cardboard and Legos is better than arriving empty handed. Do whatever you can to make your thing real and I guarantee you’ll see lightbulbs go off over people’s heads.

As designers, our job is to create things that improve people’s lives. To do so, designers must learn how to speak the languages of the various audiences we design for. It’s important for us all to recognize our own biases towards our favorite language, and have the empathy to listen and adapt to the other ones. Your design love language might be different from the person using your design.

Language matters. That’s an obvious statement for anyone working across cultures, and it especially holds true in design. As a designer, I’ve always used my skills to create tools that enable shared understanding. This mainly came about out of necessity: I was born and raised in the Netherlands, and I’ve also lived in Sweden, the UK, and for the past seven years, the US. In my 14-plus years as an industrial designer, I’ve collaborated with clients from almost every continent, from Saõ Paulo to Seoul. By working closely with people from different countries, I’ve learned first-hand how language connects us to our cultures and to one another.

Every other week, I host a creative playdate for our studio called MakeBelieveTime (MBT). We always come up with something different. Maybe we’ll combine magnets and mirrors to invent our own games. Maybe we’ll use a needle and thread to learn the basics of computer coding, or fold our hopes and fears into paper airplanes. MBT has become one of the tentpoles in our community’s calendar—a ritual that brings our bodies out of project spaces and our minds out of design mode. It’s playtime for adults.

The value of these exercises has become clear to us, but when visitors happen to be around for MBT, all the natural questions bubble up. Sounds fun, but you do this during work hours? (Yes.) Are these exercises used with clients later? (Sometimes, but not always.) How does this apply to paid project work? (It doesn’t.) So what’s the point?

That is the point. MakeBelieveTime is actually most valuable when it does not directly relate to project work in a typical, measurable way. It’s play for the sake of play, and that’s okay—in fact, it’s essential. Here’s why.

It’s about process, not product

I once had an art teacher who would sketch all over my work to show me different techniques. At first, I was frustrated because my brilliant piece was being scribbled on. But then I recognized his assumption—that an artist will do it again and again and again. That learning a new technique meant focusing on the hand, not the paper.

In our design work, we rely on our own experiences and intuition, so it’s essential that we become fluent in exploring our memories and feelings. MakeBelieveTime gives us a chance to practice that with new and unfamiliar tools. That’s why, whether it’s colored sand or temporary tattoos, the real materials of MakeBelieveTime are our personal joys, hopes, and fears.

It preps the mind for design

When I was a kid, my grandfather told me about Louis Pasteur’s belief that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Show up and do the work, Grampa explained, so that when the magic happens you’ll be sharp enough to recognize it. Making space for “sensorial, analog, hands-on radness”—that’s how one colleague described MakeBelieveTime—gives designers a much needed mental reset.

Plus, MBT actually has made an impact on client work. A handful of insights and concepts that originally came out of MakeBelieveTime actually made it into an experience we designed for a major NYC landmark.

But that’s not really the point. It’s about helping our designers spread their nets as wide as possible, and to lighten things up with a moment of pure, playful joy, so that when inspiration comes they’re ready to grab it.

It broadcasts both values and value

Most designers will sing the praises of play. It opens you up and makes you braver, more optimistic, and more creative. We pepper client meetings with pipe-cleaner sculptures or a little improv to get the blood and imagination flowing. We put a lot of thought and energy into those activities, thinking about our clients’ needs and the best way to get them comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Most designers will also admit that when deadlines loom, proposals beckon, or clients push back, play is not always top-of-mind. That’s a problem. An organization’s beliefs come through in their actions. To show that play is worth the time, you have to make time for it.

How to build your own MakeBelieveTime

We want MBT to be much more than a free-for-all with glue sticks and googly eyes, so we use three key design principles to guide the activities:

1. Make the familiar unfamiliar. To think about senses we take for granted, we infused finger paints with essential oils and asked everyone to visually illustrate the experience of smelling that scent.
2. Explore safe danger. Blind contour drawing is a great example. We all sit and draw the person across from us—without lifting the pen or looking down at the drawing. It’s always a mess, which guarantees a joyful, public fail, but also allows us to look deeply at each other and practice seeing and being seen.
3. Dig deep. We used Halloween as a prompt to create a mask that evokes a moment we were horrified by our own behavior. This allowed us to acknowledge the full spectrum of our feelings, exorcise that shadow, and leave it to the past.

The first, despairing thought that hit one of my colleagues when he first saw MBT in action was, “IDEO’s gone soft.” And, quite frankly, that's not an unfair concern when you see a room full of world-class designers finger painting.

But MBT serves as an opportunity to nourish a perspective rather than achieve an objective. It’s less about the scented fingerpaints, and more about exploring new ways of understanding and sharing an experience. It’s also about laughing together. It’s about exposing our soft side so that we can trust each other more when we take those lessons back to our project spaces and have a hunch about trying something untested but exciting.

That’s why we believe that designing a cocktail that tells the story of your first kiss doesn’t cost you your edge. It’s how you keep it.

Think back to your first kiss. Remember the place, the smells, the nerves, the lips. If you had to create a cocktail to tell the story of that experience, how would you do it? Would you make Jolly Rancher–infused vodka to conjure the candy-loving kid next door? Would a popcorn garnish nod to the movie you barely watched? Answering these questions is how the designers of IDEO New York spent a Valentine’s Day afternoon.

It’s time to challenge that notion. The ability to navigate ambiguity—and to guide people and organizations without knowing what’s ahead—will be one of the key leadership qualities of our time. Because, in today’s world, almost nothing is certain. Technological change is drastic and rapid; volatility grips politics, the economy, and the climate; the future of healthcare and education are in question. And much as it would be a relief to land on a quick fix for any number of these challenges, the reality is that solutions are a moving target, and no one leader possesses a silver bullet.

But creativity can help. According to the World Economic Forum, creativity is among the top three skills needed to thrive in 2020, along with other capabilities infused with the human touch: complex problem solving and critical thinking. In a world where thorny challenges have no magic solution, leaders must get comfortable with not having an answer—leaning into the unknown and establishing a leadership style that incorporates many perspectives, sustains optimism, and perseveres through ambiguity.

We call this approach creative leadership. The term has made the rounds in academic circles for decades, but in practice, it’s only now gaining recognition as an effective approach in today’s turbulent times. Creative leadership takes conditions that are anxiety-provoking for many, and turns them into opportunities. In certain industries, where frequent change is inherent, it’s not unusual to find leaders who fit the bill. But now we are seeing that creative leaders can spark change in any industry or on any team, from manufacturing to marketing to finance to food.

So what are those qualities that equip leaders to leverage ambiguity and drive progress? How do they show up in their day-to-day role and move their companies forward? There are three key tactics that creative leaders employ: building diverse, multidisciplinary teams to maximize perspectives; navigating ambiguity with bold ideas; and maintaining forward momentum by sharing optimism, empathy and inspiration.

1. Creative leaders convene diverse groups and rally them around tangible goals.

Among many industries facing uncertainty and change today, healthcare stands near the top. In 2015, Northern California-based Sutter Health hired its first Chief Innovation Officer to help guide its enterprise innovation strategy across their integrated healthcare system, which serves three million people in one of the most diverse regions in the country. Sutter tapped Chris Waugh, then the vice president of design at a young, innovative primary care provider called One Medical Group, to partner with them in transforming the healthcare experience to make it more simple, engaging and human.

As Sutter’s first chief innovation officer, Waugh admits he battled impostor syndrome. He’d worked in the health space for much of his career, but often on the design side (including a decade at IDEO), rather than embedded within a large healthcare organization. “Who was I to tell a surgeon what to do? These people do transplants and save lives. Why would they listen to me?”

His first step was to build a diverse, cross-functional team to pool knowledge and ideas. Every executive—from legal to human resources to operations to medicine—appointed an open-minded, collaborative senior staff member. Next, Waugh and his design and innovation team articulated an optimistic purpose: They would “touch one million lives by 2022,” providing better healthcare and services to patients and their families. Then with this lofty goal top of mind, Waugh identified the right places to start small and set constructive conditions under which they could start making a difference.

They began innovating in non-clinical areas, such as using car sharing services to help transport patients to appointments. The pilots aimed for achievable targets, impacting a small number of people in the first few months, setting the right conditions, then progressing to larger scale. “Starting small with constraints keeps you from thinking you have all of the answers at the beginning. You can be more experimental, test for consequences, increase creative confidence, and discover over time when you’re ready to go full scale.”

2. Creative leaders navigate ambiguity by leading with curiosity.

Through it all, Waugh navigated his way toward solutions even though he couldn’t know the answers at the outset. He assembled the right people to converge on decisions at critical moments. And he shared lessons and stories of progress as a way to continually motivate people across the system.

Waugh asked bold questions, such as how might we reimagine the end of life experience for ourselves and our loved ones? His teams created a simple toolkit for talking about death with loved ones, which led to dozens of events around the globe where people turned an often taboo subject into open conversations called #LetsTalkAboutDeath. They also devised a platform that connects people with physical limitations to people who can vicariously fulfill their wishes, then share those experiences with them virtually. Wins like these kept Waugh’s team inspired, increasing their creativity and confidence as they positively impacted people’s lives.

Over the years, Waugh and his design and innovation team have continued their work and expanded the range of challenges they’ve tackled, as well as the number of lives they’ve touched. Now they are moving toward more clinical experiences, such as leveraging telemedicine to support patients in rural areas. “From the beginning, we knew that medical experts needed more creative problem-solving to better serve patients and their families. Across Sutter Health, we have a culture of innovation and we try new ways of working and thinking. With each success, my confidence and the confidence of teams across Sutter grows.”

3. Creative leaders stay fiercely optimistic to maintain momentum.

In 2015, Valentina Freile, an experienced industrial designer, was hired to join an elite team of technical experts at an Ecuadorian software development company called Bayteq. Her first project focused on advancing mobile services for a large local bank. She was excited to develop digital tools to help Ecuador keep pace with global change.

But Freile’s enthusiasm quickly turned to concern when she saw the initial product concepts. The team was proud to have incorporated cutting-edge technology on par with other international banks, but they’d overlooked a major consideration: how that new tech would add value to real people—the bank’s customers. Freile felt like an outsider on the team. She was the only one ready to admit they didn’t know how to move forward. But she knew she had to intervene before they wasted precious resources.

Freile brought the team together, and didn’t shy away from asking tough questions about how the technology would support customer needs. “After many uncomfortable conversations, the team realized we had not considered our users and had overestimated the need for new technologies.” The features did not support the Ecuadorian customers’ unique needs and behaviors, and it became clear that cutting-edge technology wouldn’t bring value if it was not suited to the people it was meant to serve.

While the developers on Freile’s team realized they would have to rethink their usual approach, they were unsure how to proceed. Meanwhile, the pressure was on—senior stakeholders were asking for updates and sweating the competition.

Amidst this pressure, Freile optimistically motivated the team. She suggested they try a different route to understand local Ecuadorian banking customers. They observed customers—in bank branches, banking from home, and on the go. The team learned quickly about specific local behaviors. “Ecuadorian people move small amounts of money daily between accounts and need to make payments as easily as possible. The population prefers asking relatives for loans rather than resorting to the bank. In our Latin culture, family plays a huge role in how we handle money.” Banks were last resorts.

The team took these insights and hosted collaborative work sessions with all of the stakeholders. In the end, they did not include any technically advanced features—rather, they focused innovations on designing banking processes and behaviors that suited the people they’d serve. “We created an entirely new mobile experience, adjusted to Ecuadorian people’s needs and behaviors. We added the ability to save money among numerous family members and easier ways to transfer money to relatives.”

The results exceeded all expectations. This was a clear instance of creativity elevating the output of the company. On a team of technical experts, it was Freile whose creativity unlocked a new way forward.

A future-fit leader is a creative leader.

Creative leadership is not about avoiding change. It’s about turning vulnerability and complexity into assets, and even leveraging them as tools for speed. While it can be unsettling to dive headfirst into the unknown, modern leaders must build the creative confidence needed to navigate uncertainty with and for their teams. Their agility and positive outlook generates a feedback loop that keeps everyone moving forward with a sense of possibility about what’s to come and how they can shape it. With creative leaders, an ambiguous juncture becomes navigable, and what awaits on the other side could change the game, helping the organization take the lead.

Illustrations by Raymond Biesinger

If you ask executives today whether it’s their job to have the right answer, most would say yes. In fact, most would say that producing answers to critical challenges facing their organization is how they reached their high-level position. Who gets ahead by not knowing?

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.

Most AI products today are built for work—a space with clear problems and established systems. One founder noticed a gap: personal life is messier, harder to systematize, and mostly left behind by the AI boom. So she built Cue, a personal AI that lives inside iMessage and group chats, to go where the other tools haven't.

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In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, about staying anchored to a human need while the technology around her keeps changing shape, why she treats her business model with the same rigor she'd bring to a product, and what it feels like to build a company at this particular, disorienting moment in AI.

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The conversation also gets into how Sida makes design decisions: the language Cue uses to describe itself, the tradeoffs behind building inside iMessage instead of a new app, and a real story about a business idea that didn’t pan out.

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This is the second in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The first conversation is with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, on designing GenAI for the emotional side of money.

Most personal financial tools are built to run the numbers and optimize towards a budget. While that works for some, most people experience money as a lived relationship that does not neatly fit into a spreadsheet. Johannes Seemann and Becca Carroll discuss why money is emotional before it is mathematical, and what a human-centered approach to building a generative AI financial product looks like in practice.

Mina Seetharaman talks with Scott Shigeoka, author of Seek and Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute, about what distinguishes genuinely curious leadership from performative curiosity, how power dynamics shape curiosity, and why practicing curiosity can restore energy rather than drain it.

Mina Seetharaman talks with David Epstein, author of Inside the Box and Range, about why total freedom often produces average work, how leaders can design useful limits on purpose, and what organizations such as General Magic and Pixar reveal about the relationship between boundaries and creativity.